brian todd looks at how they did wednesday night face to face. >> reporter: chris cole, he was looking at well, how they looked. >> governor romney was much more expressive than president obama was. >> reporter: cole is an expert in the communication of emotions, an assistant professor at perdurdue university. he uses software called face reader, he applies it to political candidates. the software creates superimposed mesh maps on their faces which cole says measures the movement of hundreds of muscle points on the face. what did he measure on mitt romney's face? >> in this feature here, you can see his eyebrows are slightly up, and this would suggest an emotion of surprise, but at the same time, when you look at how his lips and nose are, that might represent something about a negative type of emotion of disgust or something like that. >> reporter: the clinched lips and the rised eyebrows he saw consistently from romney. he said that helped romney with his supporters angry over the economy. >> by communicating specifically that type of anger and that type of scorn, romney is building